Infinite Realm

Sato dashed full speed towards the boss with a sword in hand. Rather than dashing, it looked more like he was doing a 'naruto run' with his sword pointing downwards.

The distance between him and the boss was but a mere 25 metres. The word 'mere' is used here in reference to the boss as at this distance it was more than capable of casting spells at a target. As Sato was running towards it, the boss was annoyed for Sato's disrespect in the sense that it believed he thought he could defeat it after having just done away with its minion.

Rather than lifting its hand, it formed a hand seal and pointed it at Sato. But why would Fudo just let it have its way? While Sato had begun running, Fudo had already cast a [Fireball] but he held it in place, constantly pumping mana to it till a [Greater Fireball] took place. When the boss pointed its hand seal at Sato, Fudo released the [Greater Fireball] towards it.

The boss, being a mage class specialist, easily sensed the mana arriving its way. Normally it might even ignore the attack but after the previous spell Fudo had used on it the boss discovered that he had been holding back and it felt a bit threatened by his spells. However it never intended to end its spell that easily.

Turning to face the fireball arriving its way, the goblin boss' eyes glowed a faint green as a green translucent wall materialised ahead of it. With the wall acting as a blockade between it and the fireball, the boss went on to complete its hand seal.

"So simple." Fudo smirked.

The [Greater Fireball] landed on the green wall and rather than exploding, the flames spread wide, blocking the view of the boss.

[Mana Manipulation]

Rather than calling it a skill, it was a more like an in-game talent that is birthed due to high affinity with mana. In Fudo's case, thanks to the necklace Igneel's guidance, his affinity with the Fire element received a 15% boost. Regular elementalist all have a 5% boost in affinity towards all elemental mana. This serves as a rudimentary factor to the title 'Elementalist'.

Once mana affinity to a certain element reaches 20%, the player would unlock the [Mana Manipulation] feature that gives them better control over their mana. Fudo had used this 'talent' to make the [Greater Fireball] flare up rather than exploding. It was also this very same talent that helped him hold back in his previous attacks.

With the flames blocking the boss' view, Sato made use of this special cover to hurriedly try and close the distance.

The boss, being worthy of the title of an intelligent monster, quickly responded by using the green coloured barrier to push the flames away. Due to it's quick reaction, Sato hadn't closed the gap in time yet before the boss had already printed a finger at him. A dark green ray shot out from the finger, flitting rapidly towards Sato.

Sato, who was prepared for an attack, bent down by a few degrees to his right successfully dodging the attack by a little more than a hair's breadth.

Sato was now about 10 metres away from the formation.

Seeing that his previous attack didn't work so well, Fudo changed his approach and used a much simpler spell with a shorter cool-down, the regular [Fireball]. He fired [Fireball] after [Fireball] and if the spell was under cool-down, Fudo used the average [Mana ball] attack. The reason he did so was to constantly pester the boss and keep it's focus on himself. However the boss barely spared him a glance, creating another barrier to withstand the attacks.

Looking at Sato who was still moving forward, the boss lifted a hand up and suddenly, multiple dark green laser lights blasted out in a wide fashion, looking like a bunch of disarrayed laser lights. This went on till they all suddenly converged towards Sato from multiple directions, making it very difficult to dodge.

Sato however didn't grow nervous though his face showed a little bit of annoyance before returning back to normal.

"Lotus sword art : 3 leaf block." Sato said in a low voice.

As he swung his sword, he managed to deflect most of the attack while dodging the rest. Due to the fact that he wasn't an MT plus he was lacking in attributes when compared to the boss, Sato retreated three steps backwards while losing between 2-3 HP for each attack he blocked. But the boss didn't let him rest as it conjured up a small green flame cloud, pushing it towards Sato. As the cloud moved on, it rapidly expanded in size till it attained a height of at least 4 metres with a width of 30 metres.

With no move to use against it, Sato retreated back a couple of metres. When he noticed that he couldn't out run the spell any longer, Sato turned to face it. With a sword in hand, held up high,Sato struck out at the flame.

[Mountain Slash]

The flame was torn apart into two as Sato received another set of damage figures. Since he wasn't a real MT, there was no way for him to successfully go through that attack without receiving any damage unless he had an absurdly large amount of stats.

The boss didn't let him rest as it fired another barrage of attacks. Fudo had tried to interrupt and block a few of them using spells but he couldn't keep up with the boss.

'I can't get any close.' Sato began to feel a little anxious.

On the other side, they other players were already wrapping up their battles with the one-horned troll. Dream tiger had landed the last blow on the zanpatō-wielding one-horned troll. Swift Blade and Griffin had finally brought the HP of theirs to below 50% as Old Jiro, Kylian, Chesces and Dream Tiger changed their focus towards it. Under the control of the Main tank Griffin together with the bombardment of the two expert long-range players, the controller druid and the two melee opportunists, Chesces and Swift Blade, the second one-horned troll fell even faster.

With the side figures out of the way, they had finally had time for a brief respite.

Chesces stared at Sato and Fudo before announcing to the team, "Get ready. We only have 2 minutes of rest after which we join with them."

The reason why Chesces had given the players 2 minutes of respite was because he believed that the boss wouldn't be able to make any threatening move for Sato and Fudo and also, the team.s mages had been spell-casting nonstop. If they were to perform again, they would need time to naturally regain their mana otherwise it would be pointless to rush into the battle.

"Captain, I sense something weird." Kylian walked over to Chesces.

"And what would that be?" Chesces asked curiously. He had hardly ever seen Kylian this serious unless it was for a very important reason.

"Players."